Civic and political transgressions in videogames: the views and experiences of the players

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Santos Hugo Saldanha Lucinda Pinto Marta Ferreira Pedro
2018 DiGRA Nordic '18: Proceedings of 2018 International DiGRA Nordic Conference

Video games are commonly considered transgressive for providing the context for excessive violence, hypersexualized imaginaries, cheating, bullying and other sorts of inadequate behavior. Transgressions can be linked to struggles for social change, and video games present and represent ideological materializations, and therefore it is possible to look politically at the transgressions that different video games challenge players to negotiate. To explore the civic dimensions of video games, data was collected in a series of ten workshops involving 73 participants, in mixed groups of students, researchers and lecturers of various fields of study. Analyses allowed us to identify four types of transgression - i) the transgression of linear narratives; ii) the transgression of the ideologically aseptic idea of truth; iii) the transgression of the idea of free choice and merit and iv) transgression of individualism and the myth of “Other” - that were present in the experience of players, and that can contribute to understand how video games can contribute to the promotion of meaningful civic learning experiences.

 

Spectrum: Exploring the Effects of Player Experience on Game Design

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Portelli Jean-Luc Khaled Rilla
2016 DiGRA/FDG '16 - Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG

Player Experience (PX) concerns how players think and feel when interacting with a game. Although it is intrinsic to all games, few design tools exist that enable designers to approach PX in a directed, intentional manner. Drawing on existing design tools and experience-related theory focused on emotions, we present our tool Spectrum. Spectrum facilitates a PX-directed approach to game design that foregrounds intended player experience. Spectrum can also be used to critically probe people’s conceptions of game experiences. In evaluations of Spectrum with designers, while all were committed to the notion of PX, not everyone was able to translate from emotions into playable scenarios, particularly when those emotions were either visceral in nature or unusual within existing games. In evaluations with players, participants sometimes struggled to fit emotionally-specific language around their game experiences, but also stated that such reflections added post-hoc value to their experiences.

 

Grounded Theory in Games Research: Making the Case and Exploring the Options

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Salisbury John Cole Tom
2016 DiGRA/FDG '16 - Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG

Grounded Theory Methodology (GTM) is a powerful way to develop theories in domains where there are obvious opportunities to contribute in the form of carefully developed descriptive or explanatory conceptual theories. Reasonably nascent areas of academia, such as Game Studies, stand to particularly benefit from the development of new theoretical accounts. Yet, despite its proven utility in a wide range of fields and its history of rigorous methodological debate, many researchers are wary of using GTM. Conversely, many claim use of GTM but do not present an understanding of GTM's rich tradition and how this may impact their results and conclusions. This paper seeks to provide an overview of GTM, its main variants, and how they can be effectively used in research. We examine how GTM has been used in the field of games research and argue that GTM rightly be regarded a highly relevant method here.